فصلنامه قبسات
پیاپی 44 (تابستان 1386)

Quranic human, from an epistemological and ontological perspective, is a person who has searched for his existence and essence in the clear mirror of revelation and sees the start and end of himself in the path of "being from God" and "going towards God" with the purpose of "meeting God". He has a divine, theistic nature and a celestial essence and chooses "God's spirit" as the basis of the interpretation of his creation. Thus according to a trans-human logic, he is even a theologian and has an intensifying perfection of essence in creation and legislation. He manifests the outside world and the internal world of human being in himself in a single manner because he is the caliph and depository of God and bears the Majesty and Beauty Names of God and bears transcendent values and tendencies. As a result of permanent care of himself under the light of Mohammadian creed, he has a permanent reasonable and religious self-care to be attributed to Divine morals and Quranic attributes. A Quranic human is indeed a reason-centered and rationalist person, a self-directed, self-conscious, good servant of God, having pure eternal life, Saeb (correct) knowledge, righteous, moderate and well-balanced deeds in all aspects and personal, family and social fields, having sense of duty and responsibility, adorned and cleaned or permanently pure, a mystic person having true love to God, tendency to knowledge and increasing it in all times and situations of his life, …. Explaining the existential essence and identity of human being in Quran, the present article will explicate the central part and the real features of a Quranic person using Quran's verses and Hadiths. It will also display a special horizon in the field of anthropology, perfectionalism, morals and education. An aware and responsible person will understand the real position and leading situation of himself in the perfect structure of creation and will become a divine and luminous person in the presence of Quran and following its school.

The global view of Upani›ads greatly influences their beliefs and their analysis of beliefs. In man’s creation, we face the universal self (puru›a) that is regarded as the soul and main origion of the world. In The Upani›ads, the physical aspect of man is of little relevance. They deal more with his real or spiritual self. Ãtman and its parts are of far greater relevance and constitute the reality of all creatures, especially human being. On the contrary, the Holy Qurān besides the soul has paid attention to man’s body. In Qurān it is the soul that constitutes man’s real self. The body, however, like the soul is a means of achieving truth, not the truth itself, while Ãtman in its universal meaning united with Brahman constitute the truth.

Materialistic and man-made schools, especially humanism, and Divine religions and schools, especially the heavenly religion of Islam, both talk about human rights and freedoms and have the purpose of human's transcendence and honoring and want him to achieve his rights and get to his high position. But we should realistically investigate, without any presuppositions, to understand which one of the two schools has a truthful claim.Human being has two aspects of body and soul but the abstract soul has authenticity. Human has various characteristics such as reasoning faculty, potentiality of thinking, the ability of speech and talk, nature and other internal tendencies. According to humanism he is the center of creation, stands instead of God and religion, is restricted in this world and has universal goals and has an uncontrolled freedom and will; but according to Islam human being has a divine soul, an essential respect, and has civil rights and freedoms within the specified borders of religion. His rights and freedoms are not restricted to materialistic aspects, rather he has after-world life and spiritual freedom as well. His goals are not restricted to this world and he is a responsible and undertaking person regarding human and moral fundamentals.

This article will try to investigate the essence of soul according to the perspective of one of the greatest Western philosophers, Immanuel Kant. Because his views are very much affected by Rene Descartes and David Hume's views, we have briefly mentioned the main points of their views: Descartes believes that soul is a contemplative and non-material essence and Hume believes that the conception of soul is a forged and unreal matter.Kant's view about soul is discussed in the two fields of theoretical and practical intellect. Regarding theoretical intellect, Kant believes that soul is an un-knowable being and his view is similar to the agnostics. According to his view, no judgments can be made about soul, even about its existence or non-existence. It can only be considered as a unifying and regulating matter that unites and regulates experience varieties and mental faculties. Kant also believes that the reasoning mentioned by metaphysic scholars to prove the existence of soul and its attributes is just a fallacy; because its middle term doesn’t have one meaning: in one premise it means transcendent and in the other premise it means transcendental. In the field of practical intellect, Kant also tries to prove the existence of some attributes of soul through moral propositions and laws but his thoughts have been criticized in two fields.

Seyyed Hosein Nasr is one of the advocates of Philosophia perennis. Criticizing modernity, he tries to substitute modernism with the holy knowledge. He believes that perennis is a knowledge present in all religions and traditions. The result of traditionalism is to believe a holy matter which is not only the reflecting authority of human being but is also manifested in their deeds. Anthropology of Nasr is based on intuition intelligence not based on reasoning intelligence. And intuition intelligence becomes actual by revelation not acquired sciences. The holy knowledge makes human being free because it includes his whole being. The root of this holy knowledge can be found in the anthropology of Nasr which considers human as a being that carries a holy matter. At the time when Adam was in heaven, he had this holy knowledge but by his descent to this world, he lost it. The result of this descent is that human being doesn’t see objects with his conscience and in relation with The Truth, rather he sees them in a strange and departed state. In contrast with Nasr, this anthropology is changed in the modern times and portioned knowledge of human is being presented. The origin of modern anthropology's weaknesses is that they neglect the holy knowledge and have a quantifying look at human being and the world. Eliminating the holiness of knowledge and formation of the new sciences has resulted in neglecting the tasting field of human's existence and becoming separated from the main source of existence.

How does Sadra`s existential philosophy analyze human being? The question has been attended to in this paper. This philosophical school when analyzing the existence of human being, has turned all kinds of duality and multiplicity to unity. On Sadra`s philosophical rules like essentiality of existence and its simplicity, unity and analogicity, predication in high degree and low degree of the same being (hamle haqiqat va raqiqat) and inclusiveness of the simple truth (basitul haqiqah kullul al ashya), duality of human soul and body has turned to an essential unity. The multiplicity of the powers of the soul and the variety observed among knowledge, knowing and the known and the duality of origin and existential end have been omitted. In this school immateriality of human soul has been put on such a high level that its duality with active intellect has been disappeared. Generally saying, one can argue that in this school the harmony between human inner soul and outer world has been well pictured. One, therefore, can claim that this mystico-philosophical school, in spite of its intuitional method of study, can be regarded as a demonstrative philosophical thought; because it has regarded demonstrative problems in other philosophical school and has agreed with them methodologically in some way. Though it is in need of a systematical order.

Philo and Ibn-Arabi have both discussed human and his genetic position as the extract of creation with their own specific terms and views. Recognizing creation and the purpose of human being's existence and his essence as a combination of good and evil, well prepares the path of human being to bliss and misery. Their thinking method is totally alike in this regard, such that both of them, using similar expressions, consider obeying the Divine law and self-training in accordance with religious teachings, as the path of human perfection and attainment of the highest degrees of existence. The outstanding characteristic of this perspective is the meaningfulness of a life based on faith and the misguidance resulted from unfaithfulness, because the first path is in accordance with the innate becoming of the world and the second path is an aberration from the overall path of the universe. The present research mentions the similarities between the perspectives and perceptions of Philo and Ibn-Arabi regarding human from a mystical point of view.

This article will investigate the question of Divine caliphate according to Islam's view: what is the meaning of Divine caliphate? Who is the Divine caliph? What is the domain of this caliphate?One of the great values of human being is the position of Divine caliphate which belongs to humankind. Holy Adam, peace be upon him, in the position of a model for human being, is introduced as the divine caliph of the transcendent God in Quran. In the answer to the questioning objection of angles, the criterion of this selection is explained to be knowledge of Divine names. Islamic sources indicate that the Divine names are some facts about the unseen world and the treasury. The domain of human's caliphate is not restricted to earth, rather human being has the Divine caliphate on earth and in the skies and due to the cognation of caliph and the transcendent God, human being has all the Divine attributes except majesty and divinity.A complete human, being an obvious referent of the Divine caliph, is an absolute manifestation of the good Divine names and is the successor and caliph of the transcendent God in the universe and has the potentiality of a general existence. He is the direct caliph of the transcendent God and other complete humans are God's caliph through him. The main aspect of human's creation is his awareness of the Divine names and an absolute manifestation of these names and the meaning of the Divine names is some facts of the unseen world (the world of treasury). The position of caliphate is not the restriction of 'the person granting the caliphate', because he is the absolute Encompasser and Manifest, rather the reason is the restrictions and weaknesses of 'the caliph' to achieve divine blessings. A divine caliph is a complete-showing mirror of the Divine names and is the genetic guidance of universe's beings and the divine legislative guidance of humankind and also the teacher of all beings including possible and abstract beings. He is perished in the transcendent God and doesn’t have any identity for himself. Thus the analogical gradation of caliphate depending on the rating of attribution to God's attributes is possible.

In this article a comparative look at the "essence of human being" according to the existentialism school and the common opinion of Muslim thinkers and Sadra is investigated and discussed. Sadra has introduced the theory of "movement of substances" which presents a different explanation from other thinkers. It has some similarities with the insights of the existentialists while it excludes many of the problems and deficiencies of this school of thought. Sadra's theory has the required capacity to be presented in the scientific conferences of the world and can be presented as an Islamic anthropologic theory. Although a complete, explicated and exact Sadraian explanation is not presently possible but this article may be a reserve for more studies of researchers.